Saving the world isn’t free

Posted by Heidi on May 15, 2008

One of the questions we get a lot at the Monkey office is about how we can afford to work in Chicago’s most under-served communities without a lot of corporate sponsorship (nb: we don’t object to corporate sponsorship! If you work for a corporation that would like to sponsor us, feel free to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). Most of the schools we work with pay us a moderate fee, which typically covers about half the cost of bringing the program to that school. We also get money from ticket sales “That’s Weird, Grandma”.

We’re lucky to have some great foundations supporting us; their grants make up about 40% of our annual revenue. The rest of it comes from the support of individuals just like you. Yes, you.

We get individual support through donations at the end of “That’s Weird, Grandma”, from our annual Fancy Schmancy Benefit (October 19th, 2009), Monkey-o-kee…and once a year from an annual appeal to our family, friends, and fans.

If you’re on our mailing list, you probably got a letter or email this week asking you to make a donation. We hope you’ll consider it. No donation is too small (or too big!), and we could really use the support. We need to raise at least $20,000 by the middle of June so that we can wrap up this school year on a positive note and start hiring teachers for next year.

If you do decide to make a donation, we’ll feel about you the way 4th grader Tatianna felt about us after we taught in her class:

If you prefer to make an in-kind donation, I’ve included some options after the jump, as well as some examples of what your donations can help pay for. 

While we don’t have an extensive wish list at the moment, here are some “things” that we could use in addition to general operating support:

*a new speaker for our keyboard (email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for technical specs)
*a speaker phone for the conference room
*shelves and bins for our prop storage
*office supplies in general (staplers, pens, copy paper, index cards, post-its, 3-ring binders, notebooks, calculators…)
*mini dv tapes and DVDs (used to archive our school performances)
*a new to gently-used basic laptop (similar to this one)

Some examples of what your donation pays for:

$1,800 covers the cost of one in-school performance
$1,250 covers one day of educational programming in one school
$500 helps sponsor “Celebration of Authors 2008”
$400 pays for the annual maintenance plan (currently lapsed) for our fundraising software
$400 covers one performance of “That’s Weird, Grandma”
$250 covers copying programs for “Celebration of Authors”
$100 pays for the kids’ notebooks for the entire year
$50 covers props and supplies for one school show
$10 covers our long-distance phone bill for the month

We appreciate support at any level.